Good Dog
by Temple Cloud
Summary: When someone decides they belong to you, you pretty much have to accept it – whether they're a robot, a homunculus, or a large, dangerous Barrayaran soldier. Dave Lister, Ben Greenbloom and Cordelia Vorkosigan are finding it hard to get used to. Florence Ambrose tries to help. Crossover between Vorkosigan and Freefall webcomic Cross Time Cafe webcomic Red Dwarf Dragon Rider


Finally, the rescue raid was over. Miles in his uterine replicator was safely in Vaagen's lab, being checked for damage, but he was going to live. Sergeant Bothari had offered to stand guard over the laboratory door, though he was so worn out that he could barely stand up. He was even more exhausted and traumatised than Cordelia and Droushnakovi, ill with a mixture of flashbacks to the Escobar War and memory-suppression conditioning punishing him for daring to have flashbacks. It had taken Cordelia a long time to convince him that it was all right to rest, Miles was safe, Count Piotr was much too terrified of Cordelia herself right now to risk attacking Cordelia's son, and they were going to rescue Bothari's daughter and her wet-nurse soon, but right now, they all needed a good day's sleep.

Except that, right now, Cordelia herself couldn't sleep. There were too many people to worry about: not Kou and Drou any more, thank God, and Alys and her baby seemed to be doing well; but about Miles; and little Elena still being held hostage; and Gregor and how he would feel when they had to tell him that his mother was dead; and Bothari, with everything he'd been through in the past few days, and in 'hell', as he described the memory-suppression treatment, and in the war, and – well, just about everything, going right back to childhood. The more she learned about Bothari's life, the more she felt that the only surprising thing was that he even _wanted_ to be a good person, and was drawn to those who helped him become the person he was meant to be. Though arguably, a childhood of being forced to work as a prostitute could only be marginally more horrendous than Aral's having been forced to fight in yet another civil war from the age of eleven after his mother and siblings had been murdered. She cried, for the children, and for the men whose childhoods had been ripped apart by war or abuse, and who now had children of their own to bring up.

Enough. Trust them to God. You need to sleep, and He doesn't. But God worked through humans, didn't He? You couldn't use 'let go and let God' as an alternative to actually doing anything to help…

Cordelia found herself dreaming without being fully asleep. She dreamed that they hadn't managed to rescue Miles, and that he had somehow survived, but was growing up in enemy hands. This was a Miles who was made to experience Bothari's childhood: being raped, and being taught that nobody would ever love him, nobody would ever see him as a person, and the only reason he was allowed to survive when the rest were killed was that he could be exploited. She saw him finally find the courage to fight back and escape, to roam the streets, feral and friendless and deadly. She saw him brought to her and Aral, charged with hijacking, identity theft, and attempted rape: a sullen, shuttered young man with her grey eyes, Aral's dark hair, and Bothari's paranoia.

_Don't talk rubbish,_ she told the dream. _We DID rescue Miles, and if we hadn't, he'd be dead._ But then, the dream didn't have to make sense. It just had to combine her anxiety about Miles and about Bothari.

She managed to fall properly asleep, and slip into a different dream, where she was in some kind of café. A plump young man with a bundle of grubby dreadlocks hanging down the back of his black leather jacket sat slurping a lager milkshake and pouring out his troubles to the person sitting next to him, a boy in his early teens with pale skin and raven-black hair.

'I thought I'd taught him how to rebel, when he took my space-bike and blasted off!' the man was saying. 'But smashin' into that asteroid must've smegged up his personality circuits, and when I rebuilt him, he was back to bein' like, "Yes, Mr Lister, sir!" It's like he's convinced that I'm better than him just because I'm a yuman bein'. It's smeggin' well gettin' on me moobs!'

'Twigleg won't stop calling me, "Young Master," either,' said the boy. 'He even calls me _Ihr_, when we're speaking German.' Seeing his companion's blank look, he explained, 'It's the version of "you" that you might use if you were talking to a king, only nobody does any more. Most humans call each other _du_ if they're being friendly, or _Sie_ if they're being polite, and most fantastic beings, like dragons and brownies, just use _du_ to everyone. Only tyrants like Nettlebrand – that cyborg-monster I told you about – expect their servants to call them _Ihr_. But then – I suppose the man who created Twigleg was even more of a monster than Nettlebrand, and maybe he told all his creatures to call him _Ihr_ because he was a real human and they were only _Kunstgeschöpfe_ – artificially created beings. He invented Nettlebrand to be his huge, terrible, dragon-hunting weapon, and then made Twigleg and the other homunculi to be Nettlebrand's slaves, but I think he used to torture Twigleg and his brothers as well – experimenting on them. And then Nettlebrand ate his creator, and nearly all the homunculi, so Twigleg had to go on being Nettlebrand's slave on his own for about three hundred years. I suppose he was so miserable from being alone that he'd given up caring about himself enough to want to escape for his own sake.'

'But you said he learned how to lie, cheat and rebel in order to save your life, when Nettlebrand wanted to eat you,' said the man. 'Maybe he's programmed the same way as Kryten – you exist to serve, you're not allowed to want stuff for yourself, but you mustn't let humans get hurt. Hey, maybe I should try teachin' Kryten that!' he added, brightening. 'Instead of tryin' to teach him to be selfish so that he can stand up against us, teach him about lyin' to spare someone's feelin's, or disobeyin' when someone tells you to hurt someone. Maybe I should invite him down to the ship's cinema to watch _Casablanca_. The classic one starring Myra Dinglebat and Peter Beardsley. "Of all the space bars in the galaxy, she had to teleport into mine."'

'But it's not fair that robots and homunculi should feel they_ have_ to serve us,' said the boy. 'Twigleg's older than I am, he's more intelligent and better educated than I am, and yet he's pathetically grateful that I even want to be friends with him at all. I love him, and I know he loves me, but – the _way_ he loves me is more like the way a dog loves its master than like being friends with Firedrake and the other dragons. He's decided to be my slave, and nothing I say is going to change his mind.'

'Well, I know a human who behaves the same way towards me,' said Cordelia. 'He even refers to himself as my dog.'

'And what's wrong with being a dog?' asked a light, dryly-amused voice behind them. 'Or with being a _Kunstgeschöpf_, for that matter? I'm both – and I generally pass as an honorary robot, too.'

The three turned to look at the newcomer. Even standing on tiptoe, she was rather shorter than the average woman, flat-chested and young-looking, with chestnut-brown hair which she wore long, hanging loose over her yellow overalls to emphasise her femininity. The rest of her was covered in shorter, light brown fur, from her long, wet-nosed muzzle to the bushy tail which sprouted from a vent in her trousers. Cordelia had heard rumours of projects to splice animal genes into humans to create super-strong warriors, but this one looked as though they had started at the other end, giving a wolf sufficient humanity to stand upright and talk.

'You're very welcome to the Cross Time Café,' the wolf continued. 'It makes a change to see some humans in here – most of the regulars are furries.'

'Fairies?' said the boy, sounding pleased, rather than derisive or incredulous as most children his age would.

'No, furries – talking animals, like wolves, foxes, unicorns and so on. And Sam and the robots from my day-world.'

'What's a day-world?' asked the man.

'Well, in my normal life I'm an engineer. Sam is my boss – he's an alien, I think he looks something like a squid underneath his environment-suit. Most of the people on our planet are either humans or robots. I'm just moonlighting here at the Café. Sorry, I should've introduced myself. My name's Florence Ambrose, and I'm a Bowman's Wolf.' She held out a hand – and it _was_ a hand, even though her hind legs ended in paws – to shake with each of the newcomers in turn.

'Hi, I'm Dave Lister. Human, probably,' said the man, with a cheeky grin.

'Cordelia Nai- I mean, Cordelia Vorkosigan. I'm still getting used to my married name.'

'My name is Ben – Ben Greenbloom, now,' said the boy. 'I'm still getting used to my new name, too – and having parents and a sister. I never thought I would.'

'You're adopted?' said Cordelia. It sounded like a fatuous question, but with all the discussion of robots and homunculi, it didn't seem wise to take anything for granted.

Ben nodded. 'I don't really remember my parents – my original parents,' he said. 'They died in a car crash when I was three. I was in an orphanage for a while, and then went to live with a foster carer, but I didn't like him, so I ran away. I lived in a deserted factory for a while, and then when I was twelve, I met a dragon and a brownie and they let me join them on their quest, and we met Twigleg along the way when he was sent to spy on us. I didn't think I wanted to go back to living with humans, but we met a friendly archaeologist in Egypt who helped us, and when we met him again a bit later on, with his wife and daughter, they invited me – and Twigleg, of course – to come and live with them.'

Cordelia wondered what would have happened if the twelve-year-old Konstantine Bothari, fleeing from the brothel, had been adopted by a friendly archaeologist – or a friendly dragon, for that matter. Or would he, by twelve, have been already too damaged to trust anyone's good intentions? Ben, even if he didn't consciously remember his early childhood, must have been given a secure enough grounding of parental love in the first few years to have grown into a cheerful, friendly child with the confidence to take on anything life might throw at him.

'I'm adopted, too,' said Dave. 'That was when I was a baby, though, so I didn't know about it until I was much later. I was found in a cardboard box under the pool table in the Aigburth Arms, my gran told me later. She showed me the box, and it had on the side, "Our Rob or Ross". I didn't know why my original mum couldn't even decide which to call me, but I s'pose that's why my parents decided to go with "David" instead. I don't care – my proper parents, my adoptive parents, took good care of me, and so did my gran after they died. She came into my school once and nutted the headmaster for me – that's how much she loved me! But I can't help wonderin', though – who me birth parents were. Rimmer says it was prob'ly incest, like me father had sex with me grandmother or somethin'. I thought that was just Rimmer bein' a git as usual, but I got meself checked over by the ship's medical computer, and it said the same thing. So – I don't know.'

'Are you sure it didn't say "Ouroboros" on the box?' suggested Florence. 'It might just have been a crate that used to contain Ouroboros batteries.'

Cordelia thought this sounded a reasonable explanation – though using up a whole box of Ouroboros batteries didn't happen all that often. With their endless self-recharging, it wasn't as though they needed to be replaced very often. So had the box just happened to be lying around, or had it been a coded message?

'Ouroboros – they were an Egyptian species of dragon who bit their own tails, weren't they?' said Ben eagerly. 'Professor Greenbloom – my father – says he thinks they might be extinct, but Sorrel – a brownie friend of mine – says they roll circularly through time, so that they don't hatch out of eggs and can't get old and die and dissolve into stars the way silver dragons do. Or maybe they are their own parents, like phoenixes. I didn't really understand what she meant, and I'm not really sure Sorrel knows what she's talking about, either.'

Florence and Cordelia looked at Dave, and then at each other. Cordelia mouthed, _Should we tell him?_ Florence shook her head, and changed the subject.

'I'm adopted, too,' she said. 'My genetic parents are wolves, my birth mother is a St Bernard, and my adoptive parents are humans. What about you?' she added to Cordelia.

'I'm not adopted,' said Cordelia, 'but it looks as though I'm about to become the adoptive mother of a five-year-old boy who is the Emperor of three planets. His father was killed in an interplanetary war last year, and his mother was killed yesterday, fighting in a civil war. And – and sometimes I feel as though I've adopted an entire planet. An uneducated, confused, psychotic planet that doesn't know how to interact with civilised worlds.'

'I know the feeling,' said Florence. 'I assume you're a newcomer?'

'I hadn't exactly _intended_ to come there in the first place,' said Cordelia.

'No, nor me,' said Florence. 'I got offered a job on a completely different planet, had myself put in cold sleep for the journey, and woke up on Planet Jean to find that I'd been stolen by an alien squid who needed me to patch up his ship and try to get it spaceworthy. So, while we were working on that, I got caught in a flood, saved the lives of a human and two robots, got injured, met a human veterinarian who was very helpful once he was sure I wasn't a werewolf, went out on a couple of dates with him, averted a war, introduced Sam to the concept of 'work', went into space a couple of times, foiled a plot to lobotomise every robot on the planet, met my Creator, and moved in with my boyfriend. We're going on a trip to his home planet soon, so that he can introduce me to his family.'

'And this took how long?' asked Cordelia.

'About two months. Although' (Florence's tail wagged) 'the job Sam and I were working on in space was delivering satellites, so I've now got _lots_ of full moons to howl at. But it was the equivalent of two Earth months. It just _feels_ like decades. What about you? How did you wind up where you are?'

'I was the captain of a Betan ship exploring a newly discovered planet. I was left for dead when the crew of a Barrayaran ship attacked us, then captured by the Barrayaran captain, who had also been left for dead when his crew mutinied against him. Aral and I got to know each other while trekking across the planet, before my crew came back to rescue me. Shortly afterwards, my planet was at war with his, I got captured, was nearly raped by Aral's evil ex-boyfriend, then rescued when one of his own soldiers mutinied against him, cut his throat and set me free. When I got home, they acclaimed me as the hero of the war, slayer of the evil Admiral Vorrutyer and survivor of the despicable Admiral Aral Vorkosigan, and when I told them that I _didn't_ kill Vorrutyer, and that Aral Vorkosigan was a good and brave man, they decided I was a brainwashed Barrayaran spy and tried to lock me up. I half-drowned my therapist in an aquarium, lied like mad to everyone I met, escaped to Barrayar, found Aral and got married. End of Chapter One, take a deep breath.'

'So is Aral the one you said follows you around like a dog?' asked Florence.

'No, that was Sergeant Bothari. The soldier who rescued me from Vorrutyer. He's left the army now, he's working as a guard for my father-in-law, but he's decided that where there's a conflict of interest, his first loyalty is to me. And there definitely _is_ a conflict of interest, because my father-in-law wants to murder my son.'

The other two humans looked horrified. Florence considered the matter thoughtfully. 'And – humans don't come pre-programmed not to kill humans, but I'd guess that killing the young of one's own pack is a bad evolutionary strategy?'

'That's the problem,' said Cordelia, who hadn't realised until then that wolf-shaped thinking might be the key to understanding Barrayar. 'My son was exposed to poison while he was still in the womb which means he's going to have serious health problems, probably for the rest of his life. And on a planet which humans didn't evolve to live on, with limited resources of food that humans can eat, widespread genetic disease, and no medical technology, it _wasn't_ necessarily a bad strategy to kill babies who were born severely disabled. But then it became _Tradition!_ to kill all disabled people – well, all children who were born with obvious physical disabilities, anyway. And of course, it's also _Tradition!_ to obey your liege-lord – and with an intensely patriarchal hierarchy, obeying a Barrayaran count like my father-in-law – or a military officer like Admiral Vorrutyer – would definitely trump obeying an off-worlder prole woman.' She considered the implications of this. 'So I suppose that means that even if Bothari is one of the most deranged and violent people I know, even by the standards of a deranged and violent culture, he's more able than a lot of Barrayarans to…' she floundered.

'Circumvent his programming?' suggested Florence. 'No, that's not a good description in a human, is it?'

'Near enough,' said Cordelia. 'Or at least – he's able to interpret orders to make them mean what he wants them to mean. Which is encouraging, but also terrifying, considering that as well as being an exceptionally brave man and an extremely loyal friend, he's also a homicidal maniac who enjoys killing people. I mean, if I'd had the sort of life he's had, I'd be angry and feel like killing people, too, but – he really, _really_ needs to learn to think for himself about whether it's right or not, instead of expecting me to keep him on a leash and decide when to loose him at the prey.' Curious, she added, 'You said earlier that you were an honorary robot as well as being a dog. How does that work?'

'Well, it means that I'm a genetically engineered wolf with an AI brain using similar same architecture to the brains of most of the robots on my planet, except that mine is organic. I was born with the normal instincts of any puppy, just as robots come off the production line knowing how to do the work they were manufactured for, and on top of that, we – Bowman's Wolves and robots – have the instincts firstly to protect humans, secondly to obey orders from humans, and thirdly to protect ourselves.'

'Does that mean you're a slave?' asked Ben anxiously. 'You said you only ended up where you are because someone stole you. What's he like, anyway?'

'Sam? Well, he's lazy, immature, selfish, irrational, thieving, irresponsible…'

'Then why do you stay with him?' asked Ben. 'Are you frightened of running away?'

'Frightened? Of _Sam?_' Florence barked with laughter, her tail lashing so hard that it nearly knocked her over. 'Sorry, you haven't met him but – he's basically sushi in an environment suit. Three-year-old girls beat him up. No, it's not fear, it's just – well, it's like the fable of the loyal samurai. Anyone can serve a good master. The test of loyalty is serving a bad one.'

'That sounds – a dangerous principle to live by,' said Cordelia. 'I don't really know why Bothari decided to fixate on me, other than that I like him and he can talk to me, but Aral says it's probably because I'm the only person in the world who's willing to see him as a hero, and so I help him to become a better person by believing that he can, when someone like Vorrutyer could only want him as a monster to throw victims to. And, Ben, from what you've said about Twigleg, it sounds as though there's something similar between you and him. You're friendly and considerate, you'd obviously treat him as a person who deserves respect, when this Nettlebrand creature, and the alchemist, probably only ever saw him as a useful tool. So you make him able to respect himself; and so he's willing to risk danger for your sake, because you've made him into someone who can be brave. Do you think that's about right?'

'Maybe,' said Ben.

'Freedom isn't just about deciding what you want,' Cordelia went on. 'It can be that as well, of course, but sometimes it's about deciding what sort of person you want to become. But if you choose loyalty to a bad master over loyalty to a good master just because it's more difficult, couldn't it just mean that you're honour-bound to become like the bad master?'

'No, of course not!' said Florence, surprised. 'Sam isn't my master in that sense, the way Scott, my owner, was when I was a pup. Loyalty to Sam means – well, taking responsibility for explaining to him why you should ask before taking people's stuff, or helping him find a job, or just setting a good example by not trying to sneak away from restaurants without paying.'

'That sounds reasonable,' said Cordelia. 'I suppose I'm loyal to Barrayar in that sense.'

'But – what if _Sam's_ tryin' to set a good example by showin' you that you _can_ sneak away without payin'?' asked Dave. 'Maybe he wants to help you break your programming an' make you independent, by teachin' you to lie, cheat, and steal.'

'That's a good point,' said Florence. 'He might not realise that I already know that I can break the rules, and that, unless I've got a good reason for doing so, I choose not to. Our basic programming is just the starting point. We're intelligent, we learn, and by the time we reach adulthood at twenty or so, if all goes well, we've worked out loopholes that allow us to break the rules where appropriate, but have matured mentally and spiritually to the point where we can choose to do the right thing because it _is_ the right thing.'

'That makes sense,' said Cordelia. 'There was a writer back on Old Earth who said something similar about the religious tradition he'd grown up in. But – I take it all doesn't necessarily go well?'

'It depends how much social contact we've had,' said Florence. 'For me, that meant having good owners who trained me well when I was a puppy, and knew when to stop treating me as a puppy and start treating me as a young woman who needed to go to school, and who would grow up and leave home in due course. For robots who don't have much contact with humans, it can be a mixture of studying human culture – anything from very young robots watching _My Little Pony_ cartoons, to adolescent robots studying different religious and philosophical texts – and interacting with each other. But robots who haven't been properly socialised when they were young tend to have problems. I know one who's completely self-centred, because the Three Laws don't say anything about behaving ethically to other robots, and another who idolises his owner – who is the most despicable sapient being I've ever met – because he simply didn't know any other humans and couldn't imagine that there could be better examples of good human behaviour.'

'Well, teaching them religion's not goin' to help!' said Dave indignantly. 'Kryten's been programmed to believe in Silicon Heaven, just so that he'll accept bein' scrapped when his replacement comes along. That's just sick!'

'That _is_ sick,' Florence agreed, 'but it's not what the robot church that my friends go to is like. For one thing, the pastor is a radical agnostic. He's just trying to give robots the chance to learn about different worldviews, and to understand that they're free to decide for themselves what they believe. He works for AI rights in more practical areas, too, like making it possible for us to own ourselves. You know,' she added thoughtfully, 'the Cross Time Café doesn't act as a portal to allow characters to travel to each other's worlds, but it does provide a place where characters from different worlds could meet. So if you invite your friend Kryten along here sometime, he might enjoy meeting some other robots. And if you can't teach him how to live life on the wild side, I'm sure Sam can. Also,' – she sniffed at Dave's jacket – 'you've got a cat, haven't you? About human-size, wears clothes, male and desperate to meet a female?'

'Well, yeah, but he doesn't get on with dogs.'

'Oh, that's understandable. I can't promise not to bark at him, if it comes to that. But tell him from me that there's a lady cat who comes in here most nights, and as long as he doesn't steal her tail puff, I think he might be in with a chance.'

'Twigleg might want to come here, too,' said Ben. 'He's a bit wary of new places and strange creatures, but he can usually cope as long as he's with me. And I think he'd like to meet another _kunstgeschöpf_.'

Cordelia couldn't honestly convince herself that any of her friends on Barrayar, with its horror of anyone who looked remotely like a mutant, would want to come to the Cross Time Café. Or no adults, anyway – once he'd had time to settle back into a normal routine after the terrors of the last few weeks, Gregor might enjoy meeting a talking doggy, and so might Miles, Ivan and Elena when they were slightly older. But Florence just gave her a warm, furry hug. 'Go on changing worlds,' she said. 'It's what we do best.'


End file.
